Taipei 


October this year is brutal: From Slovenia to Stockholm to Amsterdam to Taipei to Osaka to Tokyo to November and I'm in New York. Then a rest, of at least a month, I hope, in wintry Toronto. But why Taipei? Because I was invited to keynote at the inaugural "OSS Global Emerging Technology Executive Summit", being held today, 27 October. How could I resist such an honour? And besides, the conference offers the rare opportunity to meet with government and business groups and talk about open source and OOo. Cost is always an appeal, but not only: governments as well as businesses understand that the real virtue in FOSS and now OpenDocument lies in being able to move way from the MS hegemony and to develop local companies.

The conference has been immensely interesting in no small part because of the people in attendance as well as the professional management of the event. I hadn't known this beforehand, but it appears that the Taiwanese government is indeed strongly backing FOSS, both in use and development. Further I was able to meet with people here and discuss how they can work on OOo, provide support for OOo, and deploy OOo more effectively. As I say to all developers: if you have questions, if you have frustrations, if you need assistance reaching the project leads, contact me now. I work very effectively as an ombudsman and one of the purposes of my travels is to reach out to developer communities and bring them into the project's mainstream, if they are not there already.

Unfortunately, I have to leave Taipei this afternoon. But I am confident that I shall be returning. 

October this year is brutal: From Slovenia to Stockholm to Amsterdam to Taipei to Osaka to Tokyo to November and I'm in New York. Then a rest, of at least a month, I hope, in wintry Toronto. But why Taipei? Because I was invited to keynote at the inaugural "OSS Global Emerging Technology Executive Summit", being held today, 27 October. How could I resist such an honour? And besides, the conference offers the rare opportunity to meet with government and business groups and talk about open source and OOo. Cost is always an appeal, but not only: governments as well as businesses understand that the real virtue in FOSS and now OpenDocument lies in being able to move way from the MS hegemony and to develop local companies.

The conference has been immensely interesting in no small part because of the people in attendance as well as the professional management of the event. I hadn't known this beforehand, but it appears that the Taiwanese government is indeed strongly backing FOSS, both in use and development. Further I was able to meet with people here and discuss how they can work on OOo, provide support for OOo, and deploy OOo more effectively. As I say to all developers: if you have questions, if you have frustrations, if you need assistance reaching the project leads, contact me now. I work very effectively as an ombudsman and one of the purposes of my travels is to reach out to developer communities and bring them into the project's mainstream, if they are not there already.

Unfortunately, I have to leave Taipei this afternoon. But I am confident that I shall be returning.
 

Posted: Tue - October 25, 2005 at 03:18 PM          

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